


Something Missing

by AceyEnn



Series: Served Promptly [19]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: At least as far as we know, Canon-Compliant, Gen, Suicide, maternal death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 00:09:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6063325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceyEnn/pseuds/AceyEnn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been two years since Gwen Corduroy died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Missing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gabu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabu/gifts).



> So Ingrid (Gabu) paid me to write a fic about Wendy's mom's death and I'm not one to turn down money so I wrote it and it sucks but they still owe me for it.

_ “WAKE ME UP! WAKE ME UP INSIDE!” _

 

Wendy groaned, turning the alarm on her cell phone off and questioning why she’d picked  _ that _ as her alarm tone. It had seemed like a funny idea at first, but it had gotten old fast. She silently vowed to change it the moment she got home from work that day.

 

And then she looked at the date on her phone.

 

July 1st, 2012.

 

Yeah, work wasn’t happening today. Stan had agreed to let her have that specific date off--”Look, I know what it’s like to lose someone you care about,” he’d told her, in a rare moment of sentiment. “Just...take care of yourself, okay, Wendy?”

 

She got out of bed regardless, but not before turning off her second alarm. The world didn’t need her phone blasting Evanescence  _ again. _

 

\---

 

Her dad took the family out to Greasy’s Diner for breakfast that morning, clearly feeling just as down as Wendy did.

 

Her brothers didn’t quite get the significance. Well, the oldest one did; Hunter was only four years her junior, old enough to remember that day quite clearly. Old enough to hear the gunshot at two in the morning, old enough to remember their dad screaming as he talked to the 911 operator, old enough to remember the note they’d found, old enough to remember their mother being declared dead at the scene.

 

Tanner remembered it too, though less clearly; it hadn’t affected him as badly. Little Danny was the luckiest--he was only an infant, he didn’t remember a thing. 

 

Wendy envied them. How could she  _ not _ ? Wouldn’t it be so much better to be like them, blissfully unaware that your mother had taken her own life?

 

Their father had told Tanner it was an accident; when Danny was old enough to question why he didn’t have a mom, he told him the same thing. Wendy and Hunter, though...he couldn’t lie to them. They were old enough to at least understand the concept, and definitely old enough to read the note.

 

\---

 

Gwen Corduroy, it turned out, had been very, very good at hiding things. 

 

She’d returned from her final tour in Afghanistan just over a year prior, and gotten pregnant with Danny shortly thereafter. As far as Wendy could tell at the time, she was happy enough. A bit scarred from being in the war, of course, but not  _ too _ badly. If anything, she was just happy to be back home with her husband and children. 

 

Her husband hadn’t suspected a thing either. “If I’d known,” he told Wendy, “I would’ve at least  _ tried _ to get her help.”

 

Wendy just didn’t get it. She was pretty sure that if she had PTSD, she wouldn’t have just faked happiness--she would’ve taken action and done something about it. It just hadn’t made sense to her at the time.

 

It did now. It had been two years--two years spent wanting her mom back, two years spent mourning--and she had finally begun to understand.

 

She didn’t talk about it much. Only a few of her best friends knew, and she’d sworn them to secrecy. So far, they’d kept their promise.

 

And every day, she plastered on a smile as she biked to work or school. She socialized and went to class (well, most of her classes--she tended to skip algebra, it just bored her) like any other kid her age. She didn’t tell anyone about her mother’s suicide.

 

But the fact remained that she missed her, and that she missed everything about how things had been before. 

 

“I’d give anything to be twelve again,” she’d tell Dipper and Mabel a few months later. And maybe someday, she’d tell them why.

**Author's Note:**

> INGRID YOU OWE ME FIFTEEN BUCKS


End file.
